Changes within living memory
History · Key Stage 1 · The School
What living memory means
LIVING MEMORY is the part of the past that people alive today can remember. That is roughly the last eighty years. It matters because you can ASK someone. You do not only read about it. Further back than that, we depend on what was written down or left behind.
Homes, shops and travel
In the 1960s most British homes had no central heating. There was one television channel to choose from in the evening. Shopping meant going to several separate shops. There was no supermarket. A long journey meant a train or a coach. Flying was rare and expensive. Every change has a cause. Ask what it was.
Technology at home
Washing machines came first. Then fridges. Then telephones. Then computers. Then mobile phones. They arrived in most homes in that order, across about sixty years. Put those five on a timeline. Ask a grandparent which ones they remember arriving. That is a timeline you built from evidence.
Ask someone born in the 1960s about six things. The telephone: one shared line in the hall, and no way to know who was calling. The television: three channels, in black and white. Shopping: daily, with no supermarket. Money: pounds, shillings and pence until 1971. Music: records. Holidays: usually in Britain. Now put each one on a decade timeline as it changed. All of this fits inside the memory of one person. That is what living memory means.